Texas will legalize marijuana in 2019

Following the legalization of retail marijuana sales in Colorado and Washington, and medical marijuana in 22 states with more to follow, marijuana legalization appears inevitable — even in “law and order” states such as Texas. The question is no longer if Texas will legalize, but when? This question has important policy implications for incarceration costs, civil liberties and medical marijuana patients. In this Baker Institute Viewpoints series, five leading experts on marijuana reform examine the question, “When will Texas legalize marijuana?”

My organization, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), recently started investing real money in the effort to end marijuana prohibition in Texas. This is a coalition effort that will hopefully resemble the coalition effort in Maryland, which is the best example of how organizations across the political spectrum can join together to reform a state’s marijuana laws.

One reason for MPP’s interest in Texas is the public opinion polling, which is quite good. For example, in February 2014, the Texas Tribune and The University of Texas surveyed 1,200 Texan adults and found that 77 percent support legalizing medical marijuana, 49 percent support making marijuana legal for nonmedical purposes, and 23 percent support keeping marijuana illegal under all circumstances. In September 2013, Public Policy Polling surveyed 860 Texas voters and found that 58 percent support taxing and regulating marijuana like alcohol, 61 percent support imposing $100 tickets rather than arrests and jail time for people who possess marijuana, and 58 percent support legalizing the use of medical marijuana.

The national number in favor of legalizing marijuana possession is 54 percent, according to the Pew Research Center’s polling a few months ago, so it makes sense that the Texas number for legalizing marijuana is somewhere around 54 percent. (This means that marijuana policy reform is more popular than most politicians in Texas.)

I understand that people like to believe that Texas is ultraconservative, but that’s not really true. If you look at the polling data and the voter registration numbers, Texas is like Maine, when we think about Republican or Democratic candidates who could reasonably be elected to statewide office in the next couple election cycles.

But there’s another reason I think we’ll legalize marijuana in Texas in 2019: We started putting money into this project a couple months ago, and we’ve found that the gestation period for making big changes to almost any state’s marijuana laws is a handful of years.

Regarding money, a California funder has promised to donate $100,000 to the Texas project if we can match this donation with $100,000 from people who live in Texas. This will probably happen annually. Any well-run advocacy campaign in any state can do a lot of good with $200,000 per year. This is a ridiculously small amount of money if one thinks about saving 70,000 nonviolent marijuana users in Texas from arrest and jail each year, every year, for the rest of time.

In the short term, we’ll attempt to pass two bills through the Texas legislature in 2015 and 2017, as a way of offering short-term relief to some marijuana users and the Texas government. The first bill would legalize medical marijuana, which is now legal in 22 states and the District of Columbia. In Texas, this would mean passing legislation that would authorize marijuana-specific dispensaries to sell marijuana to patients with cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain and a few other medical conditions that will be specified by the statute. The second bill would put a stop to the arrests of people who possess less than two ounces of marijuana, which means people like Willie Nelson and his daughter would no longer be arrested.

There are four reasons why the notion of marijuana policy reform is becoming mainstream in Texas, as evidenced by the powerful pair of hearings in the state House of Representatives a year ago. First, the government’s effort to eradicate the marijuana plant from the planet hasn’t been working over the last century, so it’s time for a new approach. Second, marijuana is safer than alcohol. If our society is committed to allowing adults to drink alcohol, shoot guns, drive cars and engage in other behaviors that can actually kill people, it makes sense to allow adults to use marijuana, which cannot kill you. Third, police and prosecutors should be permitted to spend their time on crimes with victims (such as assault or burglary), rather than arresting people for possessing plant material in their pockets. Fourth, marijuana prohibition is wasting the taxpayers’ money on a government program that doesn’t work. If we’re serious about keeping taxes as low as possible, we should regulate marijuana like alcohol (which would be a tax on a small portion of the population that actually wants to pay the tax), rather than prohibiting it (which means imposing a mandatory tax on all Texans to target a small portion of the population).

Texas is the second-largest state, in terms of both population and geographic size. Texas comprises 8.6 percent of the nation’s population, so once the Texas government decides to regulate marijuana like alcohol, the federal government will almost certainly follow.

I’ve been in politics in Washington, D.C., since 1993, so I can state with some surety that Congress will not lead on this issue. Rather, the states must lead, and Congress will then follow.

I’ve also been involved in Texas politics for 10 years, so it’s easy to notice that “marijuana” has changed from being a dirty word to being an “I don’t care” kind of word. This is good news, because marijuana should be less concerning than, say, aspirin, which kills more people each year than marijuana does.

Marijuana prohibition has been sucking the lifeblood out of Texas taxpayers — especially people who are paying property taxes, which are used to fund local jails. When you ask Texans whether they’d rather keep their money for their families’ benefit than have the state spend their money on arresting marijuana users, I think you know what the answer will be.

It will take about five more years to convince Texas legislators that we should follow the will of the people and change the law. So, let’s do this, and it will happen in 2019.

Rob Kampia is the co-founder and executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C.